Russia's role in fostering the CIS trade regime

The CIS trade regime can be characterised as a mix of, partly overlapping, weak, bilateral, subregional, and multilateral agreements. This is a result of the design of the CIS, which was explicitly constructed to allow its member states to participate in only those parts that they deemed in their best interest and not to participate in other parts. The dissolution of the Soviet Union forced the successor states to create a trade regime. Initially, they turned to one another not to disrupt trade any more than needed. However, Russia carried most of the financial burden of the initial arrangements and started to push for bilateral agreements. The others followed this example, but were careful not to commit too much sovereignty in these agreements. At a later stage, sub-regional agreements substituted for the CIS framework as well. The CIS states remained ambivalent, however, to submit too much sovereignty, whereas Russia formally stayed out of the multilateral free trade agreements altogether. The countries did work together multilaterally and committed themselves to these agreements where it concerned specific issues. In this paper, we look for causes of the myriad of agreements in the actual economic developments. We will therefore present and discuss the major trade agreements with economic arguments. We will also briefly discuss the developments in the volume and direction of trade. Although we expect the gradual improvement of the agreements and the ‘rationalisation’ of the complex arrangement, we do not foresee a consolidated ‘hard’ multilateral framework in the short or even medium term.trade agreements, economic integration, CIS

Gate-capacitance extraction from RF C-V measurements

In this work, a full two-port analysis of an RF C-V measurement set-up is given. This two-port analysis gives insight on the limitations of the commonly used gate capacitance extraction, based on the Y/sub 11/ parameter of the device. It is shown that the parasitics of the device can disturb the extracted gate capacitance and a new extraction scheme, based on the Z-matrix, is introduced that eliminates the effect of these parasitics. Measurement results prove the validity of this new extraction scheme, under different conditions

Effects of tax depreciation on optimal firm investments

This paper studies how the difference between technical depreciation and tax depreciation affects the firm's optimal investment strategy. The objective is maximization of shareholder value. When tax depreciation differs from technical depreciation, an additional investment not only generates value due to the fact that the firm can produce more, but also due to the fact that an additional deferred tax liability arises. Two types of capital stock will therefore a defect shareholder value, i.e. the replacement value of the assets and the tax base of the assets. We present a dynamic model of the firm with these two types of capital stock, and study the effects of the tax depreciation rate on the firm's optimal dynamic investment strategy, dividend policy, and long run capital stock level.Tax depreciation;technical depreciation;deferred taxation;investments;shareholder value;dynamic optimization

Optimal Tax Depreciation under a Progressive Tax System

The focus of this paper is on the effect of a progressive tax system on optimal tax depreciation. By using dynamic optimization we show that an optimal strategy exists, and we provide an analytical expression for the optimal depreciation charges. Depreciation charges initially decrease over time, and after a number of periods the firm enters a steady state where depreciation is constant and equal to replacement investments. This way, the optimal solution trades off the benefits of accelerated depreciation (because of discounting) and of constant depreciation (because of the progressive tax system). We show that the steady state will be reached sooner when the initial tax base is lower or when the discounting effect is stronger.tax depreciation;progressive tax system;discounting;dynamic optimization;path coupling

Environmental Policy in an International Duopoly: An Analysis of Feedback Investment Strategies

This paper discusses environmental policy instruments in a differential-game model of international trade with oligopolistic competition. Strategic interactions occur if firms use feedback strategies and therefore react on decisions of their competitor. Eventually this harms firm profits, because all firms act strategically. A firm reacts differently if its competitor is subject to an environmental standard than if it is subject to an environmental tax. Under open-loop investment strategies and feedback strategies of energy use, environmental taxes always give rise to more investment for strategic reasons than standards. This confirms results of multistage staticmodels of the same problem. The new result is that under feedback investment strategies the reverse can be the case.Environmental policy competition;Duopoly;Differential game